Click
the above envelope to view the letter to The Guardian 8th April
1999

Counterblast
May 4 1999 - Television programme (Download will be available
very soon)

National Demonstration
against the War, London June 5 1999

The Guardian Monday 7 June 1999

Audrey Gillan

The playwright Harold Pinter told an
anti-war demonstration that he was ashamed to be British because
of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. At the gathering of more than 6,000
marchers in a park next to the Imperial War Museum in London on
Saturday, he described the current peace talks as a sham, and claimed
that the war had been totally unwarranted. Standing in the shadow
of the two l5 inch naval guns that sit at the entrance to the mu-seum,
the playwright threw his words out like stones, each of them aimed
at the Labour government. 'I am sure those people here today who
voted the Labour party into power share the same feeling - a deep
sense of shame, the shame of being British. 'Little did we think
two years ago that we had elected a government which would take
a leading role in what is essentially a criminal act, showing total
contempt for the United Nations and international law." Pinter said
Britain's leaders had been engaging in despicable hypocrisy, and
he contrasted Tony Blair's calling the nail bombing of a bar in
Old Compton Street, Soho, "barbaric", with his defending the cluster
bombs dropped on Yugoslavia as "civilization against barbarism".
These clusterbombs cut children to pieces and this is an act which
takes place 15,000ft 'under 'those brave bombers. An act which Mr
Blair, with his moralistic Christianity applauds," Pinter said.
"Let us face the truth. The. truth is that neither Clinton nor Blair
gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been yet
another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using Nato as its
missile. It set out to consolidate one thing - American domination
of Europe. This must be fully recognised and it must be resisted."
The march, which began at the Embankment, had been organised by
the Committee for Peace in the Balkans before the peace talks began.
The organisers went ahead with the protest because they said. it
was 'obscene" that the bombing was continuing. Carrying anti-Nato
flags, target placards and crosses with the name of the civilian
dead in Serbia and Kosovo, as well as trade unions, banners, the
marchers chanted anti-war slogans and demanded that money be spent
on welfare rather than warfare. The march coincided with a number
of other anti-war marches around the world, including one outside
the Pentagon in Washington, which sent messages of support. A rally
in Glasgow was addressed by the Labour MP for Linlithgow Tam Dalyell,
Alice Mahon the Labour MP for Halifax, told the London crowd that
the real US objective in the war was the occupation of Yugoslavia,
a country which had "resisted 72 days of criminal bombardment".
She said that what she had learned was that Nato could now destroy
any country from l0,000ft in the air and the only way smaller countries
could defend themselves would be to obtain nuclear weapons. The
Committee for Peace in the Balkans intends to continue its work
when the bomb-ing has stopped," she said. "We are not going to stop
until justice is done.

Comment
in Socialist Review

When the bomb went off in Old Compton Street,
Mr Blair described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go
off in Serbian marketplaces, cutting children into pieces, we
are told that such an act is being taken on behalf of 'civilisation
against barbarism'. Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time.
But if Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious
and demented poodle. The Nato action is in breach of its own charter
and outside all recognised parameters of international law. Nato
is destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign state, murdering
hundreds of civilians, creating widespread misery and desolation,
and doing immeasurable damage to the environment. Underneath the
demonisation and the hysteria, there is an agenda. What is it?
It is certainly not what it purports to be. Neither Clinton nor
Blair gives a damn about the Kosovan Albanians, despite their
tears. This action is yet another brutal and blatant assertion
of US power, using Nato as its missile. This "new aggressive"
Nato is helping to fulfil one thing and one thing only-American
domination of Europe. The true danger to world peace is not former
Yugoslavia, but the United States.

Harold Pinter's work is represented by Judy Daish Associates Limited - and applications for all performances and uses of Harold Pinter's work (including amateur and professional stage performances, radio broadcasts, television transmissions and readings and use of extracts) need to be addressed to them in the first instance and in advance of finalizing your plans. Judy Daish Associates will then contact the Estate of Harold Pinter (Lady Antonia Fraser Pinter) if appropriate. The Estate should not be contacted directly for permissions. Please do not assume that a licence or permission will be forthcoming as there are sometimes conflicts between permission requests.